Currently, when a customer, such as a patient, receives some form of service, such as treatment or another service, from a service provider, such as health care at a health care facility, the customer may be responsible for paying some portion of the charges associated with the service, such as treatment, such as in the form of a co-payment or self-payment. Such payments are currently accepted at the time of service with cash or check, but not generally with credit or debit card, and the remainder of the co-payments are generally billed. The acceptance of such payments only by cash or check, particularly in the health-care industry, is generally a function of a lack of integration of accounting between office locations, departments, or the like, such as a lack of integration of accounting records kept by a hospital or a doctor's office with other office systems. Further, the acceptance of such payments only by cash or check is generally a function of a lack of integration between a customer record, such as a patient record, and financial records. For example, a patient in the health care industry may visit two different departments in a hospital, within the same day, and co-payments made by that patient may not be recognized by the system as being associated with that patient in that day, or as having been payable to multiple departments in that same day, prior to departure of the patient from the hospital. Some service providers now offer an ability for customers to pay past due co-payment or self-payment balances via the internet or other after-service mechanism, but the time and effort due from the customer, in addition to the amount of the payment due, may cause many customers to not pay the past due balance.
Unfortunately, when payments due are not collected at the time payment is due, a significant amount of the revenue associated with such payments thus may be lost. This is due to the fact that, when billed co-payments cannot be collected, revenue is lost. Such non-payment of fees due increases dramatically when the customer is allowed to leave the service location without being required to make payment. Currently, individual delinquent co-payment amounts in most services industries are small—often in the range of $10.00 to $50.00—and therefore are generally not worth the cost of pursuing the customer for collection. However, such small amounts can collectively add up to millions of dollars a year.
Furthermore, even in circumstances in which balances due can be collected from customers, the cost of obtaining those past due payments may exceed the amount received from the payment. For example, major health-care providers may need entire departments staffed by large numbers of employees just to track and obtain past due payments.
Additionally, to the extent service providers, such as hospitals, do force collection of balances due upon entry or exit, limited payment locations are generally available. For example, a hospital may have only one or two locations from which payment can be accepted, and thus all customers are funneled to those one or two locations. However, the inconvenience of leaving the department the customer was serviced at, and/or the inconvenience of waiting in lengthy lines, nonetheless cause many customers to depart without making payments due.
In view of the foregoing, a need has thus been recognized for a system which allows for the collection of customer co-payments and self-pay balances through an integrated credit/debit card point-of-service system, and preferably for a system that can be implemented in various service areas within a single location, and across multiple locations (often referred to as “campuses”). The implementation of such a system would enable service providers, such as health care facilities and the like, to gain significant heretofore unrealized revenue.